"Oh, why will you force me to such brutal plainness!" exclaimed Mrs. Lamont impatiently. "Really this interview will make me ill." "It may indeed," said Steve. He had no thought of sarcasm. "Mr. Loveland, this is a business matter. We must understand each other. You have property, I suppose?" "Not now; it was sold." "What do you own, may I ask? Oh, isn't it fearful to have to talk so! But I must lead you to see things clearly." "I have forty-five hundred dollars in bank and a good situation," said Steve, with a feeling that he was turning his life inside out under a stranger's gaze, and had returned to barbarism and was buying Nannie. "Bringing you what, may I ask?" "A hundred and twenty-five a month." Mrs. Lamont gave a short laugh. "Why, my dear sir--excuse me, but that would not suffice to keep Nannie's carriage, let alone herself." "Must she have a carriage?" asked Steve with a lengthening face. "As a matter of course! Would you expect her to walk?" Several things flashed through Steve's bewildered brain. Until to-day he had always met Nannie in her own or some other parlor. She had walked to-day, it is true, but perhaps she ought not to have done so. He remembered that when he saw her feet as she was paddling in the brook he thought them wonderfully small. He also recalled the fact that Chinese women of rank have very small feet and cannot walk; possibly Nannie was in a similar predicament. "Is she deformed?" he gasped. And then Mrs. Lamont put her handkerchief to her face and wept for vexation. Meanwhile Steve sat there, bewildered and distressed. He had come to expect this sort of conduct from women in general, but it was harrowing. His poor invalid mother often wept; Mary had cried now and then, poor worn-out girl; and last week, when he was at her house, even Constance had burst into tears when Randolph tried to explain something to her; Nannie had cried that day, and now Mrs. Lamont was weeping. No doubt it was a sort of melancholy punctuation mark in vogue with the sex. "Evidently we speak different languages, and it is an almost hopeless task to try to explain," said the lady at length; "but Nannie's interests are at stake, and I must attempt it." She knew only too well how futile it would be to try to influence Nannie. If this affair were ended it must be by Steve. "Can you not see," she continued, emphasizing every word and speaking in a hard, metallic tone, "that Nannie's position in society calls for certain expenditures which are far beyond your means? As a woman of fashion she will be obliged to keep a carriage and maintain a style of living which would eat up your monthly salary in half a day. She has a suitor of abundant means, a millionaire several times over--Mr. Harding. He is infatuated with her and he will give her everything she can desire." "But he is a very bad man," said Steve simply.